Video: Creating a custom shape from an Illustrator symbol

Let's see how we can adapt an Illustrator symbol and turn that into a Photoshop custom shape. So here I am in Illustrator and Illustrator has some very useful symbols libraries. So I've come to my Symbols panel and then I'm going to come to the icon at the bottom-left of the Symbols panel where we have all of these symbols libraries. First of all I'm going to come to Florid Vector Pack and we get these nice little decorative pieces of vector art.

In this course, author Nigel French covers the ins and outs of creating professional designs and artwork using crisp, scalable vector graphics in Photoshop. The course demonstrates the fundamentals of drawing and manipulating shapes; achieving various artistic effects using blend modes, layer effects, and Smart Filters; and combining shape layers with pixel-based imagery and photographs. The course also showcases practical applications for shape layers, including posters, logos, and web buttons, and includes tutorials on building custom shapes and making modifications with vector masks.

Creating a custom shape from an Illustrator symbol

Let's see how we can adapt an Illustrator symbol and turn that into aPhotoshop custom shape.So here I am in Illustrator and Illustrator has some very useful symbols libraries.So I've come to my Symbols panel and then I'm going to come to the icon at thebottom-left of the Symbols panel where we have all of these symbols libraries.First of all I'm going to come to Florid Vector Pack and we get these nicelittle decorative pieces of vector art.

I'm going to add one of those to my symbols and I'm then going to place aninstance of that on my artboard.Now this is a very simple piece of artwork.It's not layered. There are no colors. This is going to work really well turningthis into a Photoshop custom shape.All we need to do is break the link to the symbol and then we just have anchorpoints and path segments.I can now copy that, switch to Photoshop, paste it and paste it as a shape layer, and then we have our shape layer now in Photoshop and then I can come toDefine Custom Shape. Give it a name.

Thereafter, I'll be able to access that from my Shape menu.Let's have a look at something that's going to present a few more challenges.I'm going to come now to the Nature symbol set and I'm going to choose the antand add an instance of that.I'll move the ant over there, and I'm also going to size the ant up.So I press E to go to my Free Transform and I'm going to click-and-drag.Then when we look at the ant, we see that actually there's a lot more going on here.

We have several different colors making up this artwork.So if I were to break the link to the symbol and then try to do I did before,Command+C to copy, switch over to Photoshop and Command+V to paste, as a shape layer, it's not going to work.We need to adapt this artwork in Illustrator first of all.So let's see what we need to do.I'm going to come to my Layers panel and on the Layers panel we can see theartwork for the ant.

If I expand that-- I'm just going to pull this out so we can see it a bit more clearly.So here we have the ant and we expand it and we see that it's made up of a group.Now, within this group there is another group and within that group, what doyou know, there is another group.Let's expand that and then we get several paths in that group and another group there.So it's actually quite a complex piece of artwork.Surrounding the whole thing is a bounding box.All we're really interested in is this path down at the bottom. This is the ant shape.

So I can come and click on the bull's eye of that sub-layer to select just that,and then if I choose my Direct Selection tool and holding down the Alt key,drag away from that to isolate that particular path and then copy that over toPhotoshop and paste it as a shape layer, that would work.But, let's say that we also wanted to retain some of the detail.Now, a shape layer can't be derived from anything that has multiple colors.It all needs to be one color.

It all needs to be on the same vector mask, effectively it all needs to beclasped using a compound path or excluding overlapping shape areas.So what I'm going to do is adapt this piece of artwork here on the right andI'm first of all going to select that outside bounding box because we don't need that.So let's delete that and then I'm going to select this area of yellow detail.We're going to get rid of that.I'm going to come to my Select menu and choose Same > Fill Color.

It's going to select all of those yellow dots. And I'm going to delete those.Next, I'm going to select everything that we have left and come to my Pathfinderpanel where I'm going to choose this option, the Exclude overlap, which is goingto have those formerly blue shapes knock a hole through the black shape.Remember the color that we're creating this in is going to be irrelevant when weturn it into a shape layer.So now I can select this piece of artwork, copy it, switch over to Photoshop,paste it as a shape layer, there it is.

I can now select it. Edit menu > Define Custom Shape.Anytime I want an ant right now, just the place to go to get one.So there we see how we can adapt some of the great symbols that are alreadythere in Illustrator if you have Illustrator and turn them into custom Photoshop shapes.

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Learn by watching, listening, and doing! Exercise files are the same files the author uses in the course, so you can download them and follow along. Exercise files are available with all Premium memberships.
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